THE WORKSHOPS

The workshop is the most important element of the Summer School Alpbach; through participation in the workshop, students will learn how to approach the design of a space mission that will meet specific goals that will improve our understanding of the Earth's climate system. Designing such missions will involve the students in the definition of mission objectives and scientific requirements. This will lead to designing the spacecraft and payload, and defining the details of the scientific and technical methodology needed to achieve the stated objectives. They will come to understand how the general constraints of operation in space, launcher capability and, as a driving constraint, the availability of the required technologies will impact on the achievement of these goals. They will learn how to form an international team to tackle the many issues connected with space mission design, and how to work together, under pressure, to achieve the goals. These requirements are exactly those that arise in all space missions, and so the workshop is a good preparation for a career in space. In addition, at the end of the mission and architecture definition, an overall cost exercise will be performed, with the support of provided tools and tutors' expertise, to determine the project class.

The students will be pre-allocated into four teams; each team will work towards a space mission concept; in principle there should be no duplication of topics among the teams. The selected mission concepts will have specific aims in the context of climate research, the theme of this year's Summer School Alpbach. The aims will define the necessary mission capabilities. The implementation of these capabilities and the resource requirements that they impose in terms of allocated mass, power, telemetry budgets will define the nature of the spacecraft, and the mission concept which the students will develop. The students will be responsible for organising their team, for selecting spokespersons and for assigning tasks amongst the team so that all areas of the mission concept development are covered. These are very important aspects of the teamwork in the workshops.

The purpose of the workshop will be to develop the four mission concept - one by each team - to the point where a space agency could, in principle, take it over and begin the first stage of mission preparation. By the end of the workshop, the teams will have considered not only the instrumentation - having shown that it can meet the scientific requirements, but also the spacecraft orbit, its construction, its sub-systems, and its launch, together with a cost estimate. Serious considerations should be given to the in-flight operations and the design of the observing programmes.

Each team will prepare and give a one-hour presentation on their completed mission concept and submit a written report. A jury of experts will evaluate the mission concepts according to the scientific case, the technical feasibility, the innovative nature and competitiveness. The jury will evaluate the proposals in each of these four categories. This will be fed back to the teams as the final evaluation of their project.

The student teams will be supported by tutors who will provide expert advice on the project. A Head Tutor will coordinate the support provided to the students during the Workshops.

The workshop is a unique opportunity for the Alpbach students to explore new objectives and mission concepts in a realistic context and with the support of professional space scientists and space engineers.

Joint evening dinners (on one evening followed by an after-dinner talk on a subject of general scientific interest) will be organised at the Fichtensaal of the Hotel Böglerhof for lecturers, tutors, students and accompanying persons to provide a convivial atmosphere for informal discussions.